Posted!

Join the Conversation

Comments

Welcome to our new and improved comments, which are for subscribers only.
This is a test to see whether we can improve the experience for you.
You do not need a Facebook profile to participate.

You will need to register before adding a comment.
Typed comments will be lost if you are not logged in.

Please be polite.
It's OK to disagree with someone's ideas, but personal attacks, insults, threats, hate speech, advocating violence and other violations can result in a ban.
If you see comments in violation of our community guidelines, please report them.

Half a century later, half a mile down the road from Hitsville, U.S.A., Motown is coming back to life in Detroit.

Berry Gordy Jr.'s "Motown: The Musical" will land at the Fisher Theatre this week as it starts a four-week hometown run, an early stop in a planned 60-city tour for a show that's still rolling big on Broadway.

Audiences elsewhere have gotten pumped up for "Motown," with strong ticket sales in Chicago, San Francisco and Cleveland, and reports of crowds dancing and singing in their seats. But for Detroit — where memories of the label run both proud and bittersweet — the show's arrival should prove especially poignant.

It certainly will be for Gordy, 84, who wrote and coproduced the musical and has been closely involved with the Broadway and touring casts. The show's Fisher run will be the mogul's biggest hometown endeavor since he moved Motown Records to L.A. in the early 1970s.

Smokey Robinson and Berry Gordy Jr. share a laugh at a presentation for “Motown: The Musical” in September 2012.
(Photo:
‘Motown: The Musical’
)

"It's going to be really exciting, dramatic and full of love," he says of opening week. "Being home is always great, but this is even greater because I'm bringing back something that I know they're going to love and enjoy."

For the show's cast, traveling to Motown's roots comes with a swirl of emotions, says Clifton Oliver, a Broadway veteran cast in the lead Gordy role.

"Everyone's extremely excited," he says. "But the pressure is definitely going to be a component in Detroit."

Hometown fans will encounter a familiar tale. The musical chronicles the early life of Gordy and the rise of his family-built record label, where young acts such as the Supremes, Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder, Four Tops, Martha Reeves and the Temptations were groomed into global stars. At the center of it all is Gordy's star-crossed romantic pursuit of Diana Ross (Allison Semmes).

Critics have been lukewarm on the storytelling, but the show's real heart — the music — has won across-the-board acclaim. More than 40 musical numbers, most of them Motown hits, are woven into the upbeat 2-hour, 45-minute show, backed by a live band that will include 10 Detroit players.

As the musical ramped up for its New York premiere last year, Gordy was fond of saying, "We're not putting Broadway in Motown; we're putting Motown in Broadway." That pledge of authenticity holds firm for the touring show, he says.

"It's just that Motown is Motown. Motown is Detroit, and Detroit is Motown," he says. "We have a certain feeling that we know people love. Why would we go change it for anything? That's what the people have proven over the years — they want the true Motown, not glitzy and where it shouldn't be."

Like so much else this week, heading to the Fisher comes with a nostalgic twinge for Gordy.

"As a kid, I was fascinated by the Fisher," he says. "That's where I saw one of my very first big-time stage shows: 'No Strings,' starring the great and beautiful Diahann Carroll, who became a real good friend of mine. And later on I would book Diana Ross and the Supremes there for a week in 1968. So I was in awe of the theater then."

Gordy will be part of a busy week that will include Wednesday night's red-carpet opening at the Fisher and pre-party at the St. Regis Hotel. Smokey Robinson said he plans to attend, and Stevie Wonder told the Free Press on Friday that he hopes to make it.

A Tuesday reception at the Roostertail is expected to draw Motown stars and alumni back to the riverfront venue where Motown entertained itself in the '60s, and auditions for future parts in the musical will be held earlier that day at the Motown Museum. The museum, run by Gordy's grandniece Robin Terry, is overseeing the week's events, including a Thursday session for Detroit students with the musical's director, Charles Randolph Wright.

Gordy says he expects the opening festivities in Detroit to be even "more emotional" than last year's opening on Broadway, which drew a crush of media and a theater full of celebrities. On hand Wednesday night will be 15-year-old singer-actress Jadagrace, whose upcoming film Gordy is backing. He says it's likely his last-ever project.

Changes on the way

"Motown" hits Detroit as the Broadway version prepares major changes: Despite its ongoing hit status — with regular weekly grosses of $1 million-plus — the show will close in January and head to London, with plans to return to Broadway in summer 2016.

It's an unorthodox business strategy, but the show's brass has said it will serve "Motown" in the long run, trimming costs with production tweaks learned on the road. (The New York Times reported that weekly costs will be shaved by about $175,000.)

"With that strategy, we are predicting the show will probably run forever," says Gordy, who will be joined on Wednesday's red carpet by coproducers Kevin McCollum and Doug Morris.

Since its spring 2013 debut, the show has been retooled for both its Broadway and touring versions — "little tweaks here, little tweaks there," says Gordy — along with a new finale song to give the curtain call more of a bang.

Video and projections have been beefed up to help flesh out backstories and replace some physical sets, and even some key roles have been rescripted — including the character of Gordy himself.

"Even though the opening was a big, big hit, we still wanted to go for more dramatic action, more realism to the characters, tightening the show," he says. "The pace is a little faster. The sets are simpler and more effective."

The revamping was partly a product of the show's unique opening, hitting Broadway with a "cold opening," in industry parlance, rather than warming up elsewhere first.

The Gordy role became more loose and colorful, says lead actor Oliver, because "Mr. Gordy realized he had written that character sort of one-dimensional."

Where the original Broadway actor "captured a darker essence of him, a more serious side," says Oliver, the new Gordy character is "not quite a nerd, but kind of an awkward guy. He's always smiling, cracking jokes. That's the kind of stuff Mr. Gordy added for me because he said I have Fresh Prince kind of tendencies."

Tour business has been strong: The road show grossed $20 million in the 16 weeks following its April premiere in Chicago, which was followed by runs in San Francisco and Cleveland.

Show officials declined to provide details about Detroit sales, but Ticketmaster indicates that remaining seats are limited for about half of the 32 Fisher dates through Nov. 16.

Gordy expects the four-week Detroit stint to have momentum — and prove a point.

"I'm happy to come back with a successful show, because people make a mistake of counting us out in Detroit," Gordy says. "And that's a mistake, because we'll always rise and do something. Just like Joe Louis did which inspired me, knocking out Max Schmeling."

That boyhood anecdote is a key turning point in the "Motown" plot, spurring the young Gordy along a confident path that ultimately culminates in America's most successful black-run business.

For Terry, her granduncle's musical is a point of family and civic pride.

"It's a Detroit product. Here we are 50 years later, and the brand is so strong, it's still giving and still inspiring people," she says. "The world gets to see how special this story is that we get to call our own — this treasure we have right here."

Contact Brian McCollum: 313-223-4450 or bmccollum@freepress.com

'Motown: The Musical'

8 p.m. Tue.-Sat., 2 and 7:30 p.m. Sun.

Through Nov. 16

Fisher Theatre, 3011 W. Grand Blvd., Detroit

313-872-1000

broadwayindetroit.com

$39-$130

Clifton Oliver as Berry Gordy Jr. and Allison Semmes as Diana Ross in the touring production of “Motown: The Musical.”
(Photo:
Joan Marcus
)